Monday, April 20, 2009

Turning the Tables

It had been a slow day that day. Frustrated after gaining no kills, fights, or even losses, I proceeded to dock my ship. Of course, I did one last scan for a new pilot in a big ship.

As I proceeded back to his quarters, he kept on thinking about newer pilots and big ships. When a ship is picked up on a scanner, it returns it's transponder identification signal. By default, this signal consists of the pilot's name and ship type.

Suddenly, I realized the seemingly obvious idea that the name of the pilot on the transponder signal didn't have to be the pilot flying the ship.As I made my way back to the dock, I opened my com and instructed my crew chief to pick a suitable name from the local chatter for my Myrmidon Battlecruiser. Moments later, I was sitting in an obvious belt 'ratting'.

Within a minute of landing at the belt, a Thorax warped in; followed by a Hound stealth bomber. They were both experienced pilots, the Hound was out of my engagement range. But I decided to engage the Thorax anyways.

As soon as a lock was resolved, my blasters spun up, drones went out, and the enemy ship's warp core was disrupted.

But they engaged me even before my locks were resolved. I could feel my ship shudder as the first salvo of warheads hit the Myrmidon. The shields were going down faster than I'd hoped, I engaged my armor tank, in preparation for the incoming damage.

The Thorax and my Myrmidon seemed about tied for damage, our respective ships taking the same amount of damage. But then the Thorax began to gain vast quantities of distance on me. He was MWDing away from me. Belatedly, I realized that I'd pointed him with the warp disruptor and not the scrambler that I also carried. Now, he was out of range of most of my damage, save for my drones. But still able to keep me in place while the SB fired salvo after salvo upon me.

The torpedoes took to take large chunks of my armor. I engaged overheating upon my tank, in an attempt to prolong the seemly inevitable demise of the Myrmidon.

As quickly as the Thorax gained range, it came back, apparently to get in on the kill. That was the last mistake for him. I immediately spun up and overheated my blasters, knowing that it was kill or be killed.

His armor took a critical hit, the Thorax began to loose large chunks of it's hull. I began to align for an attempt to warp out. Another salvo of torpedoes, and both of our hulls were well below 50%.

But my blasters managed to score a hit upon the now MWDless Thorax, resulting in a fiery explosion.

Another salvo of torpedoes quickly knocked me out of my triumph. I wasn't out of the woods yet, my Myrmidon had been knocked out of alignment by the battle. I began the warp out procedure. It was a race between the next salvo and the warp procedure.

The crew cheered, they had survived the battle.I relaxed and shuddered as I took another look at the ship readout: 16% hull integrity had remained after the battle, the armor was already on it's way to full strength again. Almost every lower module was offlined by the damage sustained during the fight, but overheating had definitely won the day today. I therefore ordered every man in the splended engineering department of my ship a few free rounds at their favorite station-side establishment.

I love fights that end with you winning with almost no HP left and half your mods broken from overheating. It's so rare to get into a battle that can either way as compared to the one-sided blobs that usually occur.